Right as Rain

Derek Strange is a black former cop in Washington D.C., now running his own private detective agency. A case comes to him: an off-duty black policeman has been shot dead by a white police officer. The shooting was ruled accidental, but it has raised hard questions about racism inside the department.

The white officer is Terry Quinn. As Strange looks into the death, Quinn goes from subject of the inquiry to friend, and then to partner. Quinn had come upon a confusing and dangerous crime scene that night, and the two men set out to establish what actually took place there.

The search pulls them toward the people who run the city's thriving drug trade, and toward killers described as cold and merciless. Strange and Quinn have to deal with them directly.

This is a crime novel and a private-eye story rooted in a real American city, with race and policing at the center of the plot. The partnership between two men on opposite sides of the original shooting drives the book, and the tone is hard-edged, with violent characters close at hand.